Academic performance and its association with class attendance, intrinsic motivation and gender in engineering students

The association between academic performance, attendance to classes, intrinsic motivation and gender in 950 students of the engineering programs of the University of Cartagena between 2014 and 2016 was analyzed. The survey was used to evaluate the academic performance from the dimensions: conceptual, procedural and global. Class attendance and gender was assessed by teacher survey. The intrinsic motivation was evaluated through the CEVEAPEU questionnaire, which was designed and validated by Gargallo et. al (2009). For the relationship analysis, the variables were crossed and the bar diagrams and the 2x2 contingency tables were constructed applying the Chi-Square independence test. The values 0.89 (academic performance) and 0.90 (CEVEAPEU) for the Cronbach's Alpha, allowed to validate the instruments used. The results indicate that there is a significant degree of statistical significance (p <0.05) between academic performance and intrinsic motivation (p = 0.0003) at a confidence level of 95%. This means that the intrinsic motivation associated with enthusiasm, self-awareness, perseverance, mental agility and self-control have a relevant impact on the academic performance of the engineering student at the University of Cartagena. No statistical significance could be verified between the academic performance and the gender of the students. Nor between academic performance and class attendance of engineering students of the University of Cartagena at a 95% level of confidence.